1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to image/video display and processing systems, and in particular, to a method, apparatus, and article of manufacture for conducting clip operations as part of a group.
2. Description of the Related Art
When processing audio/video data, a series of tasks may be performed on the data. Each task/function may be viewed as a node in a process tree. Clips may be connected with nodes and the result of one node may be viewed as the source for the next node. However, with extensive operations, the process tree may be extremely large, with nodes too numerous to effectively view and manipulate. Further, prior art methodologies require the user to utilize a single node per operation. In this regard, to apply more than one node to a clip (or to multiple clips), the user must manually connect each clip and node. These problems may be better understood by describing prior art process trees and nodes.
Operators, tasks, or functions may perform a variety of functions with respect to a clip or source. For example, an operator may perform compositing, painting, color correction, degraining, blurring, etc. Such operators may be viewed schematically on a per-layer basis.
FIG. 1 illustrates a process tree in a schematic view. A schematic view 100 uses node(s) 102-104 to represent all of the operators in a workspace performed on one or more clips 106-110, and line(s) (edges) 112-118 between nodes clips 106-110 and nodes 102-104 to indicate the flow of image data between the operators. The output of one node 102 is the source for the next node 104. As a result clip 104 or other branch (e.g., paint or color correction projects 102) is created, the process tree indicating the flow of data through the nodes 102-104 is built automatically. As illustrated in FIG. 1, various source nodes in the form of clips 106-110 are utilized. As illustrated, front clip 106, back clip 108, and matte clip 110 may be utilized by color correction node 102. The color correction node 102 performs an operation (i.e., a color correction to the clips 106-110) on the clips 106-110 to produce a result/output 104.
As used herein, an operator (e.g., color correction operator 102) is the most common node. Alternative nodes may be used to connect two nodes. The process tree (such as the process tree illustrated in FIG. 1) can be used to manage operators and nodes. For example, users may add operators (e.g., a paint operation) to a branch, change the process order of operators 102-104, and navigate easily between operator controls. Further, if an operator is added to a layer in a schematic view 100, the operator will appear as a node (e.g., the color correct node 102). The same operator node may also appear in other workspace environments (e.g., a workspace panel). Further, in the schematic view, particular operators may be turned on/off as desired simply by clicking on the icon for that operator.
While the above prior art schematic view 100 and operations may be used to modify and edit an image/clip, the prior art has many limitations. For example, as described above, a complex process tree may involve hundreds of nodes and clips. Viewing and working with such large numbers of nodes and clips is often difficult if not impossible to navigate. In addition, a user may perform a sequence of operations and apply the sequence to a clip. The user may also desire to apply the same sequence to another clip. However, in the prior art, the user is forced to duplicate each sequence and manually link the sequence to the new clip. Such an editing approach is cumbersome and inefficient.
In view of the above, what is needed is flexibility with respect to viewing and manipulating nodes/operators in a schematic view.